Tangle - My predictions for the 2024 election.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Setting the table.

Ever since I started writing this newsletter, I've maintained two fairly consistent views:

1) Political prognostication is a fool's errand, and it often sets you up for failure.

2) I'll keep attempting to make predictions, because they are an engaging way to learn about politics, hold myself accountable for my views, and make me think critically about trends I'm perceiving.

In a regular week of writing Tangle and producing our podcast, I end up making one or two predictions about the future —  intentionally or not. In election season, I probably make predictions more frequently than that. It's a natural part of my business, and it's difficult to avoid doing it when analyzing the news. Over time, I've started to embrace this part of the job by using those predictions as benchmarks to measure my own understanding of the world. I can then look back to them in pieces like "Three things I got wrong" or "Everything we got wrong (and right) in 2023."

Sometimes, I really lean in; in December of 2021, I penned the piece “19 predictions about the future” (Note: Of those 19 predictions, 12 have been resolved; of those 12, I’ve gotten nine correct — pretty good!).

Heading into the 2024 election, I've been getting a lot of inquiries from readers about where I think things stand. Up to this point, I've been pretty squishy about my thoughts, often relying on go-to lines like, “A lot can happen in two weeks" or “it's very hard to predict much of anything about the future in election season.”

We are still a few weeks out from Election Day, but now that early voting has begun and the polling is pouring in, I think it's time to give the readers what they want and put some flags in the ground. 

I'm ready to lay out my positions bare.

So, today, I'm going to share my predictions about the 2024 election — including who will win the presidential election, which states will go which way, what will happen in the Senate and House, and a few things you can expect on and after election day. In the Tangle spirit, I'll end every section by explaining why or how my prediction might be wrong.

Before I do, I want to give a few important caveats: First, these are not things I wish or want to happen, or predictions based on what I think should happen. These are predictions I'm sharing based simply on the data and my analysis of the trends, combined with some gut instincts, reporting from the ground, and experience covering several past elections.

Second, these predictions represent my opinion only — not the views of my editors, my staff, or Tangle as an organization. Indeed, members of our team actually disagree with me — in some cases quite strongly — about some of the trends and predictions I’m laying out here in today’s newsletter. 

And third, of course, all the caveats still apply: A lot can happen in two or three weeks, and I reserve the right to change my mind before election day. We'll refer back to these predictions in our final weeks of coverage, and revisit them once the dust has settled. 

So, with the throat-clearing out of the way, let's get to it.

Kamala Harris will win Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and also lose the election.

I swear I'm not inventing this just to have something spicy to say. I've been playing with my election map for weeks, and I've finally landed on the oddball position of believing Harris will win two of the most important swing states while also losing the election. Here is what the map looks like, and why I think this outcome is likely: